General Commercial Litigation

The successful resolution of business disputes is a cornerstone of DCG's practice. Even under the best of conditions, commercial litigation is a costly distraction from the business of doing business. We understand that our clients engage us not to start or prolong litigation for its own sake but to achieve their business goals as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Accordingly, we strive at the outset of each engagement to reach our clients' objectives without protracted litigation or with no litigation at all. But when negotiation does not produce satisfactory results, we litigate with a focused, aggressive intensity designed to win the case or force a successful settlement as quickly and efficiently as possible. Though all of our attorneys are seasoned commercial litigators, they vary significantly in their seniority and specific expertise. When a new case comes to us, whether a basic contract dispute or the defense of a complex class-action securities lawsuit, we staff it with the particular lawyer or lawyers whose skills, training and experience are best suited to its subject matter and complexity, the amounts at stake, and the specific issues presented. At every phase of the process of negotiation, litigation, and resolution, we maintain close communications with our clients while managing and conducting the lawsuit to achieve their objectives with maximum effect and minimum expense and delay. In cases big and small, ranging from multi-state controversies involving hundreds of millions of dollars to disputes in which relatively modest sums are at issue, we provide the same premium quality representation as the large, traditional firms from which we came (and against which we successfully compete), but with a keener commitment to personal service and substantially lower fees and costs.

DCG's white collar defense team is led by a former Deputy Chief for the United States Attorney's Office, who is joined by a former public defender. In this practice area, we represent targets, victims, and witnesses in investigations and prosecutions of white collar offenses at both the trial court and appellate levels. In securities matters, we often represent individuals or corporations before the SEC, or in related private civil actions. We also counsel corporate clients, individuals, and partnerships on compliance with state and federal laws concerning the regulation and control of commercial enterprises. Our experience and expertise in such matters range from import-export controls to the regulation and administration of health care providers interactions with Medicare and Medicaid programs. Frequently, corporations and other business entities engage us to conduct investigations of alleged or suspected wrongdoing, either within the client's organization or on the part of a competitor. On several occasions, we have enlisted the cooperation of the FBI and other law enforcement authorities and worked closely with them to pursue and resolve such matters. In 1997, the City of Boston engaged us to investigate an alleged coverup of an incident associated with a reported inter-service rivalry between the Fire Department and the Department of Emergency Medical Services, the results of which were widely covered in the Boston news media.

Intellectual Property Litigation

Intellectual property disputes are a recurring feature of Massachusetts's high technology economy and an important part of our practice. Our experience and expertise includes a wide variety of trademark and copyright infringement cases, conflicting claims of prior invention, and other forms of patent-related litigation. When necessary and appropriate, we cooperate in such matters with certified patent attorneys. We regularly defend our clients' exclusive rights to computer software and hardware technology, magazine titles, trade names, video-taped films and photographic images, and other varieties of intellectual property. Our track record in intellectual property litigation includes the representation of a Massachusetts biotechnology company in a two-state, multi-forum lawsuit against a major university and a prominent member of its faculty in which we vindicated our client's hotly contested rights to valuable bio-luminescent technology, the regular and uniformly successful representation of a national distributor of videotaped films in litigation against copyright infringing video pirates, and the ongoing representation of one of the world's largest trade magazine publishers and trade show producers. We also played an active role as local counsel to a California-based, Silicon Valley corporation in the nation's most important computer software copyright litigation of recent years, which was ultimately resolved by the United States Supreme Court in a precedent-setting decision favorable to our client.

Arbitration and Mediation

We regularly represent our clients in the increasingly popular alternative dispute resolution venues of binding arbitration and binding and non-binding mediation. All of our attorneys are experienced in a variety of mediation formats and venues and in binding arbitration procedures. Many of our clients prefer these alternatives to litigation in the courts, as a more informal, less costly, and often more expeditious way to resolve disputes. One of our partners often sits as an arbitrator in binding arbitrations conducted under the auspices of the American Arbitration Association. Another serves on the Massachusetts Bar Association's panel of arbitrators resolving fee disputes between attorneys and their clients.

Employment Litigation and Counseling

Employment-related litigation, employment contract and severance agreement negotiations, and statutory and regulatory compliance counseling in the employment field have been mainstays of DC&G's practice since its inception. Representing corporations as well as individuals, we litigate employment contract and discrimination claims in state and federal courts and in MCAD and EEOC proceedings, serve as independent investigators of sexual harassment allegations, conduct other internal investigations of alleged employee wrongdoing, negotiate the engagement and termination of highly compensated employees, and counsel our clients on compliance with state and federal employment laws and litigation avoidance. At the MCAD and in state and federal courts, we represent corporate and individual defendants accused of sexual harassment and employment discrimination based on age, gender, handicap, race, national origin, religion, marital status, and sexual preference. Following an efficient initial investigation, we recommend prompt remedial action when the facts demand it and conduct an aggressive defense when they do not. On occasion, we also represent plaintiffs with particularly egregious sexual harassment or discrimination claims. Recently, we won a widely noted lawsuit on behalf of over 100 Massachusetts State Police officers in which the federal court struck down a Massachusetts statute requiring all such officers to retire at age 55, regardless of their individual fitness, and caused that policy to be replaced by a court-ordered universal fitness testing regimen. We often serve corporate and institutional clients as outside investigative counsel, conducting thorough, efficient and disinterested investigations of sexual harassment claims and other alleged employee wrongdoing and making recommendations to general counsel and other corporate decision-makers. The law requires employers to conduct or commission such investigations whenever sexual harassment claims are brought to their attention. We have conducted many such investigations, in a wide array of business and professional settings, and our experience and expertise permit us to accomplish that sensitive work discretely, efficiently, and effectively, with due regard for the rights of the accused, the accuser, and the employer. Our employment law and litigation clients have included a wide variety of corporations, partnerships, and individuals, including many engaged in the computer software and hardware industries, a telecommunications company, a multi-state franchising firm, a computer network designer, an advertising firm, a sales executive in the medical supplies industry, a high technology manufacturing company, a senior bank executive, a time-share resort business, a specialty plastics firm, the chief executive officer of a medical technology firm, and a multinational publishing and trade shows company.

Appellate Litigation

Apart from appeals arising from cases we have handled in the trial courts, our clients and referring attorneys engage us to litigate appeals in lawsuits other counsel have lost or won at trial. Our attorneys have experience in the Supreme Court of the United States; the United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits; the appellate courts of Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota; and the appellate divisions of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and the Massachusetts Department of Employment and Training. We have served as law clerks to Justices of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth and Eighth Circuits, the Massachusetts Appeals Court, and the Massachusetts Superior Court. Our attorneys have submitted briefs to the United States Supreme Court in a groundbreaking age discrimination case, a multi-state product liability insurance coverage dispute, a case determining whether a national service club was a "public accommodation" and was therefore required to offer enrollment to women, and "CERCLA" litigation concerning corporate responsibilities for environmental cleanup costs. Other subjects of our appellate representation have included a major intellectual property dispute, a handicap discrimination case, a will contest, a franchise dispute, wrongful termination litigation, a defamation case, debtor/creditor litigation, a land taking case, damages caused by a Boston Harbor oil spill, a federal law enforcement officer's age discrimination claim, a trial court's award of sanctions and attorney's fees, a property boundary dispute, a litigant's entitlement to a new trial, a national origin discrimination claim, and a broker-dealer firm's liability for its agent's fraudulent investment counseling.